Monday, July 17, 2023
When you look at a beautiful painting, it’s amazing. When you see any object d’art it’s easy to get lost in the form, without appreciating the space out of which it emerges. In the case of a painting, do we ever appreciate the canvas itself, the very thing that makes it all possible? You can’t have a mountain that’s all mountain and no valley. So how can you have a life consumed with all form? Thoughts, errands, phone calls, going here and there, working, doing, being, thinking, and on and on – those are objects in consciousness. Is your life an “all-wave” kind of life, only crest and no trough, all form with no consideration for formlessness?
If you broke down the chemical matter that is your body and condensed it, it would fit on the head of a pin. You’re mostly space and emptiness. If you look up on a clear night, mostly all you see is blackness. The blackness is what allows the stars to shine. It’s the backdrop that’s more remarkable, don’t you think? And so it is with us. What allows you to exist is much more powerful that existing, per se.
The universe is primarily space, which in and of itself is something. We all know we are not just cells and molecules, flesh and bones, yet it seems all that there is to the unsuspecting. Most people’s view of the world is all mountain and no valley, or all valley and no mountain, and they get trapped in the comings and goings of form. Very few take themselves out of the picture altogether and see the canvas’s remarkable truth. It’s not form that makes one’s life, it’s formlessness that allows it all. Matter is such a fractional part of the world, and space is overwhelmingly “bigger.” Shouldn’t that be something to consider?